According to recent findings by the specialist consultancy firm, Mass, as part of an Ofcom commissioned study, the performance of Wi-Fi connections is drastically affected by TVs, baby monitors and other such common household devices.
Ofcom had commissioned the study to find out the performance of the radio spectrum, including the 2.4GHz band used by Wi-Fi. It asked Mass to investigate into the efficiency of the band and to check if it was free of all interferences.
Often the sluggish connection of a Wi-Fi network is blamed on nearby networks, but, according to the result of Mass’ research, the prime culprits are everyday gadgets like TVs.
The experiments conducted by Mass revealed that interference caused by other devices are quite a common problem, which leads to deterioration in the quality of service. This is the reason why most of the Wi-Fi networks are under-utilised, i.e. they carry much less traffic than what they are capable of. The most striking discovery was that the density of Wi-Fi networks is a direct cause of interference and network degradation seen by the users.
Mass further reveals that around 10-15 percent of the users encounter problems while using their Wi-Fi networks for internet. However, it was found that some areas are more prone to these problems than others are. Due to heavy spectrum congestion, the inner city areas were found to give users poorer Wi-Fi services. For more information on wireless mobile broadband and the mobile networks and their WiFi hotspot access, take a look at Mobile Broadband Genie.